Saturday, August 31, 2013

It's Beautiful Free Fiction. Don't Let It Get Away

It's good start to the weekend with with two cool ezines bringing us nine free short stories, there's new audio fiction at the always awesome PodCastle, and two continuing audio serials. More to come. [Art from "Escape from Oz" below]



Fiction
At Aurora Wolf: Science Fiction and Fantasy.
• "Escape from Oz" by David Wright   
      "Chen felt the hypo pressing against the small of his back. The ceramic syringe had beat the low-tech metal detectors at airport security and the high-tech scans at Oz, but there was no way he could survive a five-hour flight with the battery-sized cylinder digging into his sacroiliac."
• "Fire, Cheese, and Conversation" by Nick Hoins.
       "Uani looked at the coals in the belly of the silver-black stove. He thought about the isolated, miniature world of that fire; an embryo of heat unaware that it existed in a passenger car that moved along a train track at sixty miles per hour."
• "Can You Spare a Dollar?" by Preston Dennett   
      "The body was lying alongside the road. It sure looked like a body. I hopped out of my truck to investigate. It was Stick Man, and he was dead. He was on his back, his arms draped beside his body, as if he had decided to take a nap."
• "Abenyu" by Lida Broadhurst.
     "Even a child newly slipped from a mother’s womb knows that in our Tribe, the early morning hours are sacred to the Horse God Ergane. And every morning I, as first born sit with my father, the chieftain Ogri, as our horses gallop, the shadows of their legs striping the rocks like gray snakes."

Now Posted: Electric Spec: Volume 8, Issue 3. Speculative Fiction.
• "Queen Méabh" by C.R. Hodges       
     "According to Irish mythology, Méabh - often anglicized as Maeve by those too lazy to learn Gaelic - the faerie queen of the Connacht, was buried here, in a tomb that until this day had remained unexcavated."
• "For Want of Stars" by Beth Cato       
     "If she could give Orion anything, she would give him stars, and everything they meant: crisp night air, clouds, a whisper of wind, the swoop of birds - a world unscarred, peaceful."
• "Amelia Amongst Machines" by David Brookes       
     "She had tried with no noticeable effect to communicate with them; the machines ignored her as though she wasn't there. They strode through dry, brittle scrub, metal feet crunching on grit and crumbled debris."
• "Someone" by David W. Landrum       
      "I like to go in places like that." He answered honestly instead of obfuscating or making up a story. "There's something about abandoned buildings that fascinates me."
• "Little Ms. Saigon" by Malon Edwards
     "Rehani didn't take the backpack. Our passports are still there. So is Isabella's manufacturer's certificate of origin. That doesn't comfort me, though. Just because Rehani didn't leave the country doesn't mean she and Isabella won't be hard to track within the myriad of unfamiliar scents that smell nothing like her."
Audio Fiction
• At Cthulhu: "The Wrong Side of the Tracks, part 3" Horror.
     "Today's episode contains the penultimate episode of "How I Found Livingstone" and the fantastic third part of T.C. Mcqueen's "The Wrong Side of the Tracks""

• At The Fantastic Worlds of Edgar Rice Burroughs: "Episode 6 - Out of Time's Abyss" Adventure.
     "Chapter III, Part Two - Bradley has escaped the Blue Place of Seven Skulls having found a passage to the river that runs beneath the building. As he wades through the waist deep river, in pitch blackness, something bumps him from behind!"

• At PodCastle: " El Alma Perdida de Marguerite Espinoza" by Jeremiah Tolbert. Fantasy.
     "Marguerite Espinoza took her last breath as the sun slipped behind the Salt Mountains outside the expansive windows of her third floor bedchamber. Alvardo nearly missed the moment, eavesdropping to the gathered family’s whispered conversations. He had falsely predicted her passing four times in the past three days, but the passing was unmistakable. As Maestro Eusebio had said many times, “When the moment comes, you will know.” And he did."

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